Rotherham abuse survivors have changed national attitudes to CSE victims, says council leader

Rotherham Council leader Chris Read says survivors from the town have changed the national perspective on child abuse and grooming. Chris Burn reports.

When Chris Read became Rotherham Council leader in February 2015, the organisation was, in his words, “in dire straits”.

Then just 32 and having only been a councillor for four years, he became the local authority’s third council leader in six months after the damning August 2014 report by Alexis Jay into the town’s child sexual exploitation scandal and council and police failures was followed a few months later by Louise Casey’s follow-up investigation which found the authority to be “still in denial” about the problems and not fit for purpose.

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Government commissioners were ordered in to run the council while Read replaced Paul Lakin as the authority’s leader, who himself had only taken the job months earlier after Roger Stone quit following the publication of the Jay report.

Rotherham Council leader Chris Read has been in charge of the authority since its lowest point in 2015.Rotherham Council leader Chris Read has been in charge of the authority since its lowest point in 2015.
Rotherham Council leader Chris Read has been in charge of the authority since its lowest point in 2015.

In the weeks following the Jay report, which found there had been at least 1,400 victims in the town between 1997 and 2013, largely at the hands of grooming gangs, the council’s chief executive Martin Kimber and director of children’s services Joyce Thacker also quit, while South Yorkshire police and crime commissioner Shaun Wright resigned due to his previous role as a Rotherham councillor with responsibility for children’s services.

Government commissioners left in 2018 after judging sufficient improvements had been made and while Rotherham Council is on the gradual road back to being what Read terms a “normal council”, the dramatic events that unfolded at the council as a result of the scandal stand in stark contrast to the outcome for South Yorkshire Police.

The long-awaited Independent Office for Police Conduct report investigating more than 200 allegations of police failures in relation to the scandal confirmed what was already public knowledge when it was finally published this week – that no officer has lost their job despite 265 separate allegations being made by more than 50 complainants. Just five officers received sanctions, with the toughest being a final written warning.

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Read says while positive changes have taken place behind the scenes at South Yorkshire Police in response to the scandal, he understands the public angst about the apparent lack of any accountability.

Chris Read has praised abuse survivors in the town for changing national perspectives on the issue.Chris Read has praised abuse survivors in the town for changing national perspectives on the issue.
Chris Read has praised abuse survivors in the town for changing national perspectives on the issue.

“To be fair to South Yorkshire Police, there have been big changes. There have been two changes of Chief Constable and I think we’ve had four different divisional commanders now.

“My experience of them has got better and better over that period of time. What they’ve not had is the kind of shock therapy the council had of big changes and lots of turnover at the top very quickly.

“It really bottomed out to ‘this is the lowest we are ever going to go and therefore we have got to build back out from it’. In some ways that has served the council well because it did mean we could put everything on the table and drive improvement from there."

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He says that even applied to bread-and-butter issues such as missed bin collections, with data on the issue not being properly recorded.

“We didn’t know how we were doing in terms of missed bins and that was kind of indicative of the council at the time. There was a big piece of work about improving our data collection exercises and management oversight to the service with the ironic conclusion at the end of it that we were absolutely bang average in terms of missed bin collections. Then we got really good at it and were in the top 10 per cent for not missing them.”

He adds: “SYP haven’t had that and they’ve had to kind of come up with their own improvements and people like me kicking them behind the scenes. Slowly over time that does take hold. For people who are observers to it, it doesn’t have the same impact of seeing a big bang and an emotional moment and then things change.”

Read says the length of time to complete the £6m IOPC investigation is hugely disappointed.

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“The fact that it has taken eight years to get here and have a report that fundamentally reconfirms what Alexis Jay said in 2014 in itself feels deeply sad,” he says. “Sarah Champion [the Rotherham MP] was absolutely right that this is further validation of the truths of survivors that they fought so long to get heard.

“But it has also taken eight years to get us to a very similar story with very little further action in terms of consequences for the people who should have been responsible for it.”

But another outcome of the Jay report is that it has led to multiple criminal trials of offenders who the police had initially turned a blind eye – with many of the historic convictions coming through the National Crime Agency’s ongoing Operation Stovewood. It has so far seen more than 200 suspects arrested, with 20 people convicted and jail terms totalling almost 250 years handed down.

Meanwhile, many Rotherham victims and whistleblowers have spoken publicly about their experiences in the hope of preventing others having to go through the same thing – something Read says has helped change national perceptions of child sexual exploitation.

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“For all the grief and pain and awfulness of it, the things that happened here and more specifically the things our survivors have done have changed attitudes in Britain to child abuse. Every now and again I will do local council events talking about safeguarding and the Rotherham Council experience and people from the NHS, other local authorities and other organisations will say, ‘Because we learned from you from those failings and the way you do things differently, we made improvements and we do things differently’.”

He says that rather than incorrect but overly common perceptions that a troubled child might “have it coming to them”, practitioners nationally now more rapidly recognise issues that could be signs of exploitation.

“That's huge - that as a legacy is absolutely enormous and I think people ought to be proud of that change.”

Previous leader 'got Jay report over the line'

Chris Read has defended his predecessor as council leader Paul Lakin.

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Mr Lakin resigned in the wake of the Casey report which found the authority was in denial about Child Sexual Exploitation (CSE) and not fit for purpose, having only taken the post months earlier.

Read says Lakin was instrumental behind the scenes in ensuring the Jay report, which exposed much of the scandal, took place.

“We wouldn’t have commissioned the Jay report without Paul Lakin.

“Paul Lakin got us over the line in a really brave way in a really hostile environment so we could lift the lid off it. He felt we weren’t doing well enough on CSE and he wanted it to be better.

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“I wouldn’t have been able to do the things I did if it hadn’t been for Paul. Clearly there were other people who were arguing for, ‘No, there’s nothing to see here, don’t do it’ and people who were if nothing else out of their depth.”

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